A/N – Many apologies for the delay on this chapter. Thank you to all my reviewers for your responses and feedback.

Disclaimer – I don't own the canon characters or concepts. I'm writing this for my own personal gratification and am not receiving any profit from it. Don't sue.

VIII

The trouble started on the first night she ventured out into the Diagon Alley social circuit.

"Where are you going, Mrs. Malfoy?"

"Who is your companion?"

"Is there anything you'd like to tell us?"

"Is it love?"

Ron, Hermione and Colin managed to band together and shelter her from the worst of the onslaught, forcing their way through the throng, but it was a close-run thing. Her first venture out on the town since the end of her official mourning period and the paparazzi were all over her, searching for a story, as if some kind of glamour clung to her and could be dispensed vicariously.

Even when she'd been deep in the throes of romance with Draco, they hadn't needed to worry about photographers flocking around them, analyzing their every step, watching their every move with hungry, judgmental eyes. Of course, they'd been in a state of war, then, and the press had other things to worry about, but even so…

"You're lucky you didn't come out with Harry," Ron said, panting, after they'd forced their way into an exclusive restaurant equipped with anti-eavesdropping and anti-peeping Tom charms. The very French maitre'd hovered around them obsequiously, bowing profusely, declaring how very grateful he was that Madame Malfoy had graced his humble abode with her presence.

Ginny gave him a wry look. "Thank you, Philippe." Lucius had told her once that the so-charming Philippe had begun his life in the East End. "Do you have our table ready?"

"But of course," he said expansively. "There is always a table in Philippe's for the Malfoy family."

Hermione rolled her eyes, and Colin grinned. She shot them both a quelling look and proceeded with queenly grace towards their table – one of the very best, of course – where the waiters almost came to blows over who was to have the honour of serving her.

Once again, not something she had ever experienced with Draco by her side – but then he had been resolute in rejecting his aristocratic roots.

"Merlin, Ginny," Ron said under his breath, once they had ordered. "Is it always like this?"

"I don't know," she answered frankly. "Draco and I never got the chance to go out like this, and Lucius and I never left the valley – Colin?"

"Why are you looking at me?" Colin looked innocent. "I'm not an expert."

"You were free enough with your advice yesterday."

"Oh?" Hermione grinned. "Tell."

"Colin here spotted my designer dress robes –"

"Yes," Ron chipped in, "What happened to your old clothes?"

Ginny scowled, hunching her shoulders. "The house elves wouldn't give mine back. Lucius says –"

"And what's with this Lucius says? Why should anything he says matter to you?"

"Well, what else am I supposed to call him? And there was no one else to teach me."

"Ginny," Hermione said carefully, "I don't know that I'd believe anything he has to say. He's a cold-blooded, amoral, manipulative bastard."

"I know, Hermione, but –"

"Come on, Gin, you can't think he has anything but his own best interests at heart? We worried about you, all alone with him; but now that you've left the old bastard behind, you can move on."

Ginny looked at her earnest face, so determined, so familiar, and felt a sudden, inexplicable feeling of resentment. Why was everyone telling her that she should move on for her own good? She was not a fool. She knew that Lucius was manipulative, and that he'd had plans for her. She didn't need every single person she knew telling her so.

She was twenty four years old. She was old enough – and surely competent enough – to look after herself.

"Hermione," she said slowly, fiddling with her silver cutlery, "you know I think of you like a sister. And Ron, I know that you can't help being anything other than an elder brother. But don't you think that you should trust me?"

Colin cleared his throat discreetly and managed to fade out of the discussion.

Hermione laid her hand on Ginny's. "Ginny, we all know how devastated you were by Malfoy's death. You were so vulnerable –"

"And now I'm back. I'm strong enough to stand on my own feet, now. You have to let go."

She turned to Ron, who looked stubborn and unhappy. "Ginny…"

"No, Ron." She said it firmly, confidently, and eventually Ron scowled and gave in.

"Right. Fine. I'll believe that you can look after yourself, if you stop throwing Malfoy's name around as if he was an arbiter of wisdom –"

Ginny grinned.

"Master Malfoy," Libby announced, "Mister Zabini is here."

Lucius looked up from his account books. "Send him in," he said shortly, dipping his quill into the inkwell and continuing his calculations.

Libby went out, and then Blaise Zabini grinned and sauntered into the room with the familiarity of a man who had long since been given free run of the Manor. He and Draco had grown up together, had been friends since infancy –

"What is it, Mr. Zabini?" He sanded the parchment, let it settle, and then blew gently on it, shaking it to remove the excess.

"I came to request permission to pay my addresses to Ginevra, sir"

Lucius paused, looking up from his ledgers. "I do trust that you're not serious."

That vivid, mobile face, with its amused, intelligent black eyes, was quite serious. "There are others, far less scrupulous –"

"And my answer will be exactly the same. No. Whether they ask, or not – it will not happen."

"With respect, Mr. Malfoy," Blaise said quietly, "I have to wonder about your motives in this."

Lucius peered at him over the rims of his half-moon glasses. "Oh?"

Blaise stiffened. "I mean no offence. But she was my best friend's wife, and I was not there when Draco died – but I can protect Ginny. I'm asking for a chance to court her."

Lucius sighed, pushed his chair back, and went to stand over by the window. "It must be reassuring, to have such honourable intentions. –But what makes you think that I have such control over her remarriage? Are you so sure of my strength?"

Blaise stared at him incredulously. "Are you serious?" Lucius turned back, and he stopped abruptly, swallowed, and quickly modulated his voice. "You are Lucius Malfoy. And she is your daughter-in-law, Draco's heiress – I'd think you'd make damned sure you have control over her…"

"She is stubborn, Blaise. A Weasley, an Auror, quite determined – and, I believe, more than competent – to make her own way in the world without any interference on my part. She has informed me that she no longer needs my protection –"

"And yet you give it still, watching over her from afar, without the reciprocal obligations on her part."

Lucius only smiled, his mouth quirking ironically. "You and your parents did well to avoid Azkaban, Blaise."

Blaise eyed him with open curiosity, not sure whether he was bluffing or not. "Is it so bad?"

Lucius laughed. "Not for much longer."

Blaise walked slowly through the hallways of Malfoy Manor. It had been a very long time since he'd had to face Lucius Malfoy in his own study – he'd forgotten how intimidating the old bastard could be. As a young boy, running cautiously through the house – always on the lookout for Narcissa – and as a wretched, misbehaving adolescent, he'd dreaded the times that he and Draco had been hauled into Lucius' study, where he would make them wait, on tenterhooks, while he finished his correspondence.

Now, years later, Lucius was still intimidating. But after nine long, terrible years of imprisonment, after the Ministry strictures and persecution, and the premature deaths of his wife and son, he was not what he once was – else he would not have let Ginny go.

The Malfoy heiress, legal owner of every single asset that Lucius had spent his whole life cultivating, out in the big wide world with no protection.

Blaise had been the best man at Draco and Ginny's wedding. He'd watched her walk down the aisle of the Ministry registry building, dressed in a hastily transfigured white dress, and had felt a shocking punch in his midsection –

Hastily suppressed, and quickly denied –

And could never look Draco in the eye, afterwards.

He had not been there, when Draco died. He'd been too guilty, too aware of his shortcomings, and so he had not been by his oldest, best friend's side at the end. But he could stand by Ginny…

Much, much later that night, as Ginny sat before the fire in her new flat in Diagon Alley – bought and paid for with Malfoy money – she looked around at the sleek, modern décor, and felt an unexpected pang for the old, tapestry covered stone walls of the Manor. She'd chosen to stay here instead of at the Malfoy town house because she'd wanted to strike out on her own, but there was something strange and daunting about so much blank, empty space –

She'd never lived alone. When she'd been an Auror on active duty, she'd lived in crowded, often dingy accommodation, often sleeping two or three to a room – she'd never woken up knowing that there was no one else in the house, that no one would hear her if she called out, or if she got up in the early hours of the morning, searching for company.

Even in the huge, ancient, often drafty Manor, Lucius had been as much of an insomniac as she. She'd gotten used to whimsical conversations at three in the morning, she in her all-enveloping night gown and he in his ridiculous Victorian smoking jacket, as much an affectation as his long hair and his snake-headed cane.

Now, once more awake and aware at three a.m, she had nothing but her own thoughts to occupy her, and nothing to distract her from the absolute emptiness. She wondered whether Lucius was as empty as she was, all alone in his huge, gilded cage, with no one but the house elves to keep him company. Ginny had to admit that while she had learned most of their names and had come to know them as well as she could, house elves were not big conversationalists.

(Laughing, she imagined Hermione's reaction had she dared to voice that thought aloud)

A tapping at the window drew her out of her depression. Curious, she stood up and opened the glass, letting the owl in – it was, to her surprise, one of the Malfoy owls from Lucius' mews. Feeding it a quickly transfigured tidbit, she unrolled the extended parchment, and, gently scratching the owl's feathers, read the beautifully penned message.

Gringotts. 10am. Griphook is expecting you. I trust you are now composed enough to shoulder your responsibilities, and more than resourceful enough to handle any fortune hunters and confidence men who come your way.

Ginny swore under her breath and threw the note into the fire. As the flames licked at the creamy, expensive parchment, she could hear the old bastard's sardonic laughter.